It was me and the Eldest that actually went to the park, everyone else crashed at my brother's pad. The Eldest has been desperate to go see the Harry Potter part of the park so we hit there first. Unfortunately, the only camera I have was on my crappy phone. It has a very poor excuse for a camera, but I did get a few fuzzy pics for ya.
Here's the Hogwart's train, the Eldest and two old folks we didn't know but were captured in our memory forever:
The Castle and a really odd smile from the Eldest:
The highlight of the Harry Potter stuff was in Ollivander's Wand Shop. We stood in line for an hour to finally be ushered in the door with about 20 other people. The shops are all tiny and you have to stand in line just to get into the gift shops. It's utterly ridiculous. I don't care if it's supposed to be true to the size of the shops in the books, it was poor planning for an amusement park. Anyway, once in the shop, the kids were told to go to the front. Ollivander came down the steps and welcomed the crowd and then began studying the children. Only one child is chosen per group to be "measured" for a wand. He made a beeline for the Eldest. It was so much fun to watch.
He made him hold out his "wand arm" and the Eldest did so while the guy carried on teaching the crowd how a wand chooses it's owner. Every time the Eldest's arm started to droop down the guy would stop what he was saying and just stare at the poor kid until the arm came back up. It was so funny. Then he gave the Eldest a wand and had him perform a spell to move a ladder. Drawers opened instead. Not the right wand. He picked another for the Eldest to try. This time he was supposed to make one bell ring. Tons of bells rung. The guy said, "Obviously not the right wand, but we're getting closer!" When the Eldest took the last wand, light started streaming down on him and a chorus of angels started singing. It was very well done and it totally made the kid's day. The only drawback was they made us pay for the wand, but we can't have everything, can we? :)
The Eldest was ready to leave the park right then. I could have wrung his little neck. We paid that much for tickets and he didn't want to see anything else? Good thing I'm a mean Mommy or we wouldn't have got this pic:
Or this one:
Or this one:
It really was a lot of fun.
